The United States and Japan will step up their defence cooperation to deal with the threat from nuclear-armed North Korea as tensions in East Asia remain high, officials from the two allies said on Thursday.

Inquiry urged over NT water licenses

Aborigines are being excluded from the Northern Territory's development via discriminatory allocation of water licenses, the head of the Northern Land Council says.

About 20 per cent of water in NT aquifers can be allocated for farming use, and the NLC wants a guaranteed reserve so Aboriginal people can economically benefit by farming their land before allocations are exhausted.

Calls were renewed this week for an inquiry into how the territory government has allocated licences after it was revealed to parliament that Darwin magistrate and former Country Liberals MLA Peter Maley had been handed two water licences for his own property.

The Labor opposition says the grants are potentially worth millions and were issued before an appropriate aquifer plan has been finalised.

Last year the CLP's candidate for the federal seat of Lingiari, Tina Macfarlane, was granted a massive license against the advice of the water allocation planner and in the face of two failed Supreme Court challenges, overturned when the CLP won government.

"People are very concerned with the removal of traditional owners' ability to be part of water planning processes, and what we see now is a free-for-all that is just unacceptable at a time of unprecedented dysfunction in Aboriginal communities," Northern Land Council CEO Joe Morrison said on Friday.

The government has so far resisted calls for an inquiry into the allocation process.